NonFiction Book Club: May 2021
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?
His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers—The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company that produces the podcasts Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and Broken Record, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam interview musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy's Top Global Thinkers.
Find similar reads using these book appeal terms in NoveList Plus:
Genre- Business & Economics; Tone- Thought-provoking, Upbeat; Writing Style- Accessible, Engaging
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Discussion Questions:
1. According to Lewis Terman’s research, what is the relationship between intelligence and success? Did any of the findings surprise you?
2. What is the significance of the 10,000 hour rule? Are there any skills that you’ve acquired over your life on which you’ve likely spent 10,000 hours?
3. Did any of the examples given in the book surprise you? Have you seen situations similar to the ones described in the book?
4. Are there other examples of cultural/historical events creating ‘batches’ of successful outliers, similar to the examples of the computer giants and industry barons?
5. Gladwell wrote, “It is not easy to be so honest about where we’re from.” What other giants of commerce, politics, and society have histories that helped propel them to where they are? Have they publicly acknowledged their backgrounds in shaping their successes?
6. What did you think of Gladwell’s conclusion that “the outlier in the end, is not an outlier at all.” Are there examples you can think of that contradict his conclusions?
7. What is ‘practical intelligence’ as it is described in the book? How does it differ from IQ?
8. Gladwell asserts that there are no self-made people - do you agree? Who are some people who defy the examples and hypotheses raised in the book? What about the people referred to in the book that exemplify the hypothesis about there being no self-made people - The Beatles, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc - do you agree with his ideas that much of their success is based on timing?